The other day a Spanish liberal said to me: "You are lucky in Britain. Your people take no interest in politics so your political life is marvellously stable." Generalissimo Franco would have smiled had he overheard the conversation, for the cult of stability is a boon to the autocrat.

The Spaniard's remark was fresh in my mind as I read in the "Sunday Telegraph" Kingsley Amis's confession of a disenchanted Leftist. Mr Amis has said goodbye to the Labour Party, but tries not to identify himself with the Tory Party. "I am not a Tory, nor pro-Tory (who could be pro this Tory Party?) nor Right-wing nor of the Right, but of the Centre, equally opposed to all forms of authoritarianism." Yet he later says: "Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be Left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics..."

His disgust at the Left is understandable and wholly admirable. Who can have any respect for those who profess to stand for Liberty and the Rights of Man, yet are perpetually indulgent towards Communist dictatorships? He is right to support the Americans over Vietnam, and to expose the hypocrisy of their Leftist critics. Yet he is wrong – disastrously wrong – to confuse "politics" with "authoritarianism" and to imply that the Centre is the zone of "non-politics." If men of the Centre withdraw into quietism, politics will not cease to exist: they will merely become a monopoly of the extremists, or of some form of arbitrary power.

In describing it as non-political, Mr Amis has misread the character of the Tory Party. Certainly, its chief merit has been a distaste for abstract principle, but it owes its survival to a workmanlike approach to politics and a sensitive reaction to the exigencies of power.

Whatever may be said to the contrary, its strength lies in the love of private property, which inspired the parliamentary revolution of the seventeenth century and has been the central theme of British politics ever since. Mr Amis is silent on this topic, but it is hard to doubt that his conversion is at least partly a result of the change in financial circumstances which his own talents have brought about.

The rights of property must not be elevated into an abstract principle. Justice and expediency alike dictate that they should, in practice, be quite severely limited. But the essence of Toryism is that the Rights of Man begin with the right of Mr A and Mrs B to have and to hold their own; and that Liberty begins with the particular freedoms of individuals rather than with any "liberal" programme imposed by the State. Since the tendency of the age is collectivist - towards superpowers, super businesses, and super-trade unions – the task of resistance is all the harder, calling for detailed political knowledge and intense political effort. The non-politicians are traitors to the cause. A nation or a person that is tired of politics is tired of life.

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